Am I the Only One Who Hated The Series Finale of "Girls"?

First things first: this obviously fucking contains spoilers so do not read ahead unless you have completed your viewing of the final season of Girls.

To start, let me just say that I have been a dedicated, loyal fan since season one. I've watched each episode of each season multiple times. But the last three episodes of Girls, including the series finale?

You couldn't pay me to watch those again.

They were the absolute worst episodes of T.V. I can recall. And this was absolutely the fucking worst series finale ever made. Except for maybe Seinfeld. I've heard people were pissed about that (it was before my time).

I suppose the end of Felicity was fucking atrocious, but it was a prime-time, teenage drama. Girls, however, is a brilliantly crafted HBO series of genius. So fuck me, but I was expecting more from the final season.

Not even expecting "more". I was just expecting the same. The same spot-on writing, the same perfectly crafted jokes, the same sexual awkwardness, the same pitch perfect commentary of the current social and political climate. All of the key elements that made Girls famous.

Instead we got some bullshit pregnancy story line, a bunch of fucking pointless scenes, and ultimately a show that ended with the majority of the Girls not speaking to each other.

I know the meat of the show is Hannah, but the show is still called "Girls", not "Hannah's Dumbass Life".

Let's just back up a bit.

The beginning of the season started out strong, as always. The series premier opening with Hannah's piece in the New York Times, the camera panning over all of the key players reacting to seeing it, the obvious set up that Hannah was "making it" as a writer - that was fucking great. Hannah is promptly sent to cover/write about a surf camp and does a bunch of classically "Hannah" things - sunning her vagina, awkwardly squeezing half naked out of a wet suit - that we're reminded, despite her successes, she's still the same Hannah. Marnie and Ray are still fucking weird, with Marnie being the character you love to hate. Adam and Jessa are even fucking weirder. The season was set up to be great.

Episode two saw Hannah, Marnie and Desi in a cabin alone together ultimately revealing Desi's year-long addiction to pain killers, which seemed a hilarious way to play on season five and how fucking erratic Desi was the whole time. Also in episode two was a rare handful of scenes showing the friendship between Shoshanna and Elijah - he accompanies her to a professional women's mixer and she is her usual, over achieving-I-just-want-to-fit-in adorable self. Jessa shows up and is an ass - cementing the fact that she's still basically the same, as is the dynamic between Jessa and Shoshanna. Neither one being wrong or right, and a brilliant example of two supremely different, yet fantastic types of women.

Episode three was literally one of the most fucking brilliant episodes of television I have ever seen in my entire life. It topped my favorite episodes of Six Feet Under, and even topped some of the breathtaking episodes of Mad Men that will stand the test of time. It was a show akin to season two, episode five: "One Man's Trash" where the entire episode is just Hannah and one other temporary main character. This time it was Hannah and "Chuck Palmer". The whole episode was just one stunning, jaw dropping line after another and I had my mouth hanging open the entire time just relishing in the incredible writing.

In hindsight, episode four is where things start to go ever so slightly south, but it's still so great you don't realize it until later. It's the episode where Jessa encourages Adam to make his own movie. At first it seems classic - the ever supportive cheer leading woman relentlessly encouraging her man to be all that he can be. In the episodes following, Adam making a movie just proves to be fucking weird and unrealistic. Another sort of hindsight annoyance is the fact that Hannah ends up in the E.R. for a UTI being seen by the very same doctor man she had an affair with in the aforementioned season two episode five. Like - what are the fucking odds? Even for Girls that was a bit of a reach, and just seemed unnecessary. I'm sure they were meaning for it to be funny in an inside joke kind of way, but it didn't work. One of the grounding touchstones of Girl's has been that - as weird and awkward and fucked up as the shit that happens on this show can be - there's always humanity it it - you can always see yourself in it. But bringing that character back to see Hannah in the E.R. was was just too improbably of a coincidence.

Also in this episode you find out, from the unrealistic doctor encounter, that Hannah is pregnant. At first this seemed like it would be fun to see them tackle this subject. Girls has not beaten to death the pregnancy scare story line having only tapped into it once early in season one with Jessa's almost-abortion-turned-miscarriage. So after all these years, having one of the Girls have to deal with an unwanted pregnancy seemed fitting.

Episode five brings us to the beginning of shooting Adam's movie. At first you can laugh at the premise of him making a film about the oddball relationship he had with Hannah, but eventually it just seems tired and downright boring. On another note: Loreen is amazing, as always, in this episode as she begrudgingly accepts her fate as grandmother-to-be. There is the total shock that Hannah is keeping the baby, and the in-the-back-of-your-mind chatter assuming the story line is now going to be miscarriage instead of abortion. But then they throw you for a loop with the whole, "This is my baby" line and moment shared between Hannah and Loreen. Then Hannah and Elijah share an emotional, heated scene about her fucking up their best friend roommate plan by having a baby. But you have to remember that Hannah and Elijah have on again off again lived together, so why he'd think them living together now was "forever" is a little weird. On a happier note, we see Ray and Marnie break up, thank fucking christ.

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Episode six is, sadly, one of the few brief moments we see Tad in this season at all. It felt like a totally side swept afterthought - the obligatory scene showing him and his boyfriend happily living together so they could cross "Closure to Tad's story line" off the final season list. Tad was such a rich, fantastic, regular character on the show that it felt like that didn't do him justice at all. The ridiculous story line with Adam shooting his movie continues, to the point where he's chasing down Hannah to watch it. And as stupid as it was, I couldn't help but laugh my ass off at the scenes with Marnie and her mother. That was perfectly, brilliantly, classically Girls awkward and Rita Wilson was so on point as Marnie's mom, as she's always been. Another plus is we see Elijah's story line get beefier - his story ended up being the only remotely satisfying character ending.

Episode seven is one of my favorites and the final one before the season totally tanked. It is basically all about Elijah and it is so much fun to watch. We get to see him sing, dance, act, and generally be his incredibly talented self. We also get to see Marnie have her ass handed to her by a pawn shop jeweler. Elijah gets his moment with Dell, and Hannah tells the father of her baby that he is, well, the father.

Episode eight is just fucking terrible and aimless. It is sadly the last time we see Ray, and if I would have known that him kissing some random ass girl on a fucking merry-go-round was going to be his ending I would've barfed. It starts out strong - with Ray and Shoshanna together, their friendship still close, working on Ray's latest project. But very quickly Ray meets Shoshanna's old boss and they hit it off in an overdone way that felt rushed and unplanned. They knew Girls was ending the whole time. They knew this was going to be the final season. So to do such a disservice to another one of the show's beloved characters seemed very strange. It seemed more like a series written that got cancelled in the middle of the season so they had to oh shit hurry and tie all the loose ends up. Also in this episode is Adam literally running up to Hannah on the street and saying he wants to raise her baby with her. So fucking out of nowhere, unnatural, and weird. And the next scene is literally them fucking on Hannah's bed. What the actual fuck? It was not cohesive in any way and just made no fucking sense. The middle of the episode shows Hannah and Adam in a home goods store looking at the baby aisle, again being so awkwardly (not in a good way) domestic. The episode ends with Hannah and Adam sitting across from each other in a diner booth talking about marriage, grocery shopping and crying. Oh ok - so Adam saying he was going to go grocery shopping and Hannah saying she was going to home and write was supposed to quite obviously be both of them non-verbally communicating their profound realization that they can't be together. What the actual fuck? Why the fuck they had Hannah and Adam get back together for six hours is fucking beyond me. It was so pointless and disappointing.

Episode nine is again just comically bad. After it was over I was shocked anything could've been worse than episode eight. It opens with Hannah accepting some fucking random college professor job at a university upstate. This was again - fucking out of nowhere. It had nothing to do with anything. There was no lead up and it seemed like a totally rushed way to end a fucking series. Generally, with a well written, intelligent show that is famous for such rich character development - the final season is crafted in such a way that has you sucked in the entire time - rooting for the characters, pulling for them to get what they've been working for. With this final season of Girls - there is fucking none of that. Never before have we heard of this university, heard that Hannah wants to be a professor, heard that she's thinking about moving. You have about 4.5 minutes to get on board with this and form an attachment to it and it just fucking does not work. And I'm sorry, take away my fucking feminist card, but it is so extremely fucking unrealistic that a single mother having her first goddamn baby would choose to take a job and move away from her entire support system, all of the familiarity, the comforts of home. That makes no goddamn sense. I'm not saying single mothers don't rock or women aren't fucking amazing super heroes or that Hannah can't "do it on her own". I'm just saying that it's fucking a little fantastical. I've always respected Girls for their respectable effort to make the girls "real" in their struggles - to pay the rent, to find and keep jobs, to not have to go back to their parents couches, etc. So this whole Hannah being cavalier about single motherhood thing is fucking ridiculous. It gets worse though.

Hannah can't get a hold of Shoshanna so she just shows up at her house. She hasn't seen Shoshanna in months and just so fucking happens to show up at her house on the night of her engagement party? Again, that felt like a fucking reach and a totally unrealistic coincidence. And also - Shoshanna is fucking engaged? And would really have her goddamn engagement party in her tiny-ass studio apartment?? What the actual fuck? Again - a major story line pulled out of someone's ass. Shoshanna has been prominent in this whole series and this entire final season, so no mention of the man that she's serious enough to marry until the second to last episode? Again......what the actual fuck? There seemed to be so much missed opportunity for introducing the guy, letting us get to know him, having us root for them to "end up together" or at least be happy or feel something, anything. But, just....nothing. Just some random guy she's marrying. At the party, Jessa and Hannah have some forced apology that felt so scripted, as Girls usually doesn't. They just missed the fucking mark on everything. AND I'm sorry, but what the fuck was Ray not in this scene? Fucking Ray, who is arguable Shoshanna's best friend and whose new lover is Shoshanna's ex-boss and friend, wasn't at her engagement party? I'm so confused.

The final episode, number ten, opens with Hannah and Marnie spoon-sleeping in Hannah's bed in her giant house in upstate New York. Because Hannah magically has tons of money to hire movers, get a great house and generously furnish and decorate it on a young writer's salary, as a single woman, with a professor job she hasn't even started yet. That's realistic. Then comes the awful, forced, poorly written scene where Marnie is convincing Hannah that she needs to live with her. Fast forward five months to Hannah having her baby. And naming him Grover. For the millionth time - what.the.actual.fuck.

Thankfully Loreen is in this episode, but we find out that she's living alone and hates Tad. Not exactly a great ending for her either. And not that all the character's endings have to be positive, but they at least have to be full of the rich, meaty goodness that they've always been. Hannah is oddly unchanged becoming a mother, which seems also extremely unrealistic. I'm sure they thought they were so clever with the little montage of scenes showing Hannah trying to get her baby to latch and then calling him an asshole. It felt predictable and tired to me. We then see Hannah angrily get out of the tub, start to make Bisquick, and then run out of the house after a heated conversation with Loreen. She just starts walking and the next scene shows the sun has fallen, i guess - to give us the impression that some time has passed? That she's been out walking for hours? We then see some never before seen character burst out of a random house screaming and badly acting. Then we're forced to sit through a four minute scene of her interacting with Hannah in a way that is totally and completely fucking pointless. That ends with Hannah giving this girl her pants and shoes? So fucking terrible, so poorly written, so awfully acted and just a little twilight zone-y.

We cut to Loreen and Marnie sitting on the porch, wondering what Marnie's next step is and she dreamily says she's always thought of going to law school. Huh? What? Six years of Marnie and we've never heard anything about this? Loreen shares that she has a friend who is a judge and that she could see Marnie as a judge. What the fuck? Why, again, is this so fucking out of nowhere? And that's just it. That's Marnie's ending. Some fucking bullshit conversation with Loreen. Soon after, Hannah comes home to Loreen and Marnie on the porch drinking wine. She sits there with them in a scene that is dull and drab at best. The baby cries, Hannah of course goes upstairs having just magically cleared her mind and awakened her maternal instincts after some glorious fucking walk. She picks up her baby, sits in the rocker, he latches, and that is fucking it. That's the end. That's the last scene. That's the fucking show.

I don't know what happened, but I can't believe an iconic show like Girls went out like such a hot mess.

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